A Glitch in the System
There was no particular strength in Maia’s voice. If anything, it sounded utterly drained—the feeble rasp of an ancient elder on the brink of exhaustion.
Yet none of them could offer an easy answer. For the question that had just fallen from her lips was the very riddle that had shaken the entire world, all of humanity, and this planet itself for the past twenty-nine years, from the dawn of the Cataclysm to this day.
What about Wahsh?
Mu-saeng glanced sidelong at the entity floating above his shoulder. That was the exact spot where the goggled sorcerer’s gaze was firmly anchored. Of course, to Yoon Pyo and Geum Soo-ah, it merely looked as though she was glaring straight at Mu-saeng.
He isn't saying a word. No, maybe he can't.
Wahsh, the very focus of Maia’s scrutiny, offered no reaction whatsoever. His rubber bill remained shut tight. All he did was use a stubby yellow wing to nudge his black horn-rimmed glasses higher up his face.
An excruciating, heavy silence hung in the air.
It was a woman’s voice that finally shattered it.
“Do you think we have any idea what the Tower is?” Geum Soo-ah demanded. “We’re the victims here. We are the ones suffering because the Tower suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Because of you—because of the entities dwelling inside it.”
Sorcerer Maia’s eyes drifted slowly toward her.
“Entities... Living creatures. Are we truly living creatures, human?”
“...What?”
“Can that which is slaughtered only to be reborn ever be called ‘alive’? Tell me, what is your definition of life?”
“...What in the world are you talking about...?”
Maia had not made a single aggressive move. She merely continued in that slow, weary monotone. And yet, Mu-saeng, Geum Soo-ah, and Yoon Pyo could all feel it.
“What is life? What is death?”
With every word Maia uttered, the oppressive weight grew.
“I exist in the Tower. And yet, here I am now, standing in this place as well. Then what am ‘I’?”
Each phrase that tumbled from her mouth pressed down upon them like a suffocating gravitational field.
“What is the Tower? Is it omniscient and omnipotent? Is it God? If not God, then what?”
She had not budged an inch from where she stood. A boss of the 55th floor or the 55th Dungeon was not supposed to pose a fatal, incomprehensible threat to elite high-floor climbers like them.
“Vice Head,” Yoon Pyo called quietly.
“Yes.”
Despite her stillness, Yoon Pyo dropped into a combat stance. Geum Soo-ah immediately followed suit, realizing that further conversation was pointless.
Under normal circumstances, a monster was never supposed to comprehend the structure of the Tower or its dungeons. They were never meant to grasp the concept of an instance. This was an unprecedented anomaly, and to set things right, there was only one standard procedure.
“Kim Mu-saeng-nim,” Yoon Pyo said. “I do not know what specific objective you had in mind here, but would you mind if we withdrew and reset the dungeon?”
Slay the anomaly and re-enter a fresh instance. That was the instinctive, foundational protocol of all Awakened when facing broken dungeon logic.
Even with their words spoken openly before her, Maia did not stop her fevered questioning.
“No, setting all that aside... Who created the Tower? What lies at its pinnacle? Who waits beyond its summit? What purpose—”
[“It’s a bug.”]
Wahsh finally spoke up. The tense look he had worn while listening melted away, replaced by the calculating glint of a curious rubber duck.
[“Did a conflict occur because a marked human and I are present in the same instance? Mmm... I'd love to tear open its code and inspect it further, but its internal logic is completely scrambled into a tangled mess. There's no reading it.”]
Hearing Wahsh’s muttered diagnosis, Mu-saeng finally grasped what had been going on. The rubber duck hadn't remained silent because Maia’s ramblings struck a nerve or posed a genuine threat...
He was running diagnostics with his Administrator Authority the whole time. Unbelievable.
Mu-saeng had briefly wondered if Maia was on the verge of unveiling some terrifying, profound truth—whether she was about to provide the true answer to what the Tower actually was, a question he himself had pondered more than once.
[“Still, the baseline data itself isn't half bad,”] Wahsh noted nonchalantly. [“The original body on the 55th floor should be quite useful to us, Kim Mu-saeng.”]
Maia’s brow furrowed, as if Wahsh’s dismissive mutterings deeply offended her.
“An eternal loop that repeats without end... Are you saying that even after finally attaining enlightenment, I am still nothing?”
[“What’s this warped copy babbling about? You’re nothing but a defective knockoff,”] Wahsh snorted disdainfully.
Only then did Geum Soo-ah glance between Mu-saeng and Maia, her brow furrowed in bewilderment.
“Who... are you talking to?”
Maia was unmistakably glaring in Mu-saeng’s direction, yet Mu-saeng hadn't uttered a single syllable. Who, then, was she conversing with?
“Is that all I am to you?” Maia roared softly, her voice trembling with indignant fury. “Can you still not comprehend that there is fundamentally no difference between you who climb the Tower and me who resides within it?!”
Mu-saeng quickly cleared his throat and shook his head.
“Ahem... Sounds like she's just muttering to herself. More importantly—yes, it might be best to step out and reset. It doesn't look like we'll be having a productive conversation with this one.”
He smoothly steered Yoon Pyo and Geum Soo-ah’s attention away. If he couldn't acquire the Guardian from this glitchy manifestation of Maia anyway, then just as Yoon Pyo suggested and Wahsh implied, wiping the slate clean and resetting the dungeon was the smarter play to secure what he came for.
“Understood. Then we shall immediately—”
“Hwahahahahahat!”
The moment Yoon Pyo nodded, Sorcerer Maia burst into laughter.
In that instant, all three humans noticed the shift. The rims of the clear goggles she wore flared a malevolent crimson. Worse still was the sheer, wild fury woven into her laughter—a manic aura so ferocious it sent an icy shiver down their spines!
“Vice Head—!”
Snap!
Even before Yoon Pyo’s command left his mouth, Geum Soo-ah had already gathered concentrated photons in her palms, preparing to unleash them.
Yet Maia’s finger snap was faster.
A blinding flash engulfed the chamber, and in the next fraction of a second, Yoon Pyo and Geum Soo-ah vanished into thin air.
“Very well! Human bearing the second mark, and you... lackey of this wretched world! Even if I must slaughter you both, I will drag the truth from your corpses!”
The boss of the 55th floor, the Last Sorcerer Maia—commonly known as 'Mama'—glared at Mu-saeng and Wahsh as if ready to devour them whole.
Not on the actual 55th floor of the Tower.
Within the 55th Dungeon, which mirrored it in every detail.
“That’s what she’s saying, Wahsh. Any thoughts?”
Wahsh smirked.
Executing with Administrator Authority
Geum Soo-ah and Yoon Pyo realized in an instant that they had been forcibly teleported back near the dungeon gate.
“Huh? D-Director! Vice Head—!”
“Assistant Manager Seo! Speed acceleration potions and ranged defense scrolls. Now! And Vice Head—”
“On it! I’ll blow the path wide open!”
Geum Soo-ah thrust both hands forward like twin artillery cannons.
KZZZZZZZZT—BOOOOM!
The particles of light gathered across her ten fingers coalesced into a colossal beam of pure luminescence that tore straight down the corridor.
Even Seo Yeong-hwa of the Geumseong Raid Headquarters stood frozen, jaw slack at the sheer destructive majesty.
Between the gate and Mama’s inner sanctum lay a succession of fortified blast doors, each heavily guarded by legions of magitech Guardians. Yet...
A single skill wiped out three blast doors and every Guardian in the vicinity...?! Is this the Vice Head’s true full power?!
In the blink of an eye, three reinforced gates had been reduced to vapor. As a desk coordinator who was not part of the vanguard assault force, Seo Yeong-hwa had never witnessed the true capabilities of his directors firsthand, leaving him thoroughly awestruck.
“Assistant Manager Seo, keep tearing summon scrolls,” Yoon Pyo commanded. “The moment you lock onto Kim Mu-saeng-nim, report immediately.”
“Y-Yes, sir! But Director, what about—”
Shatter...!
“—Huh?”
It was far too early for Seo Yeong-hwa to recover from his shock. The figure of Yoon Pyo standing before him suddenly fractured into millions of glistening shards and dissipated.
What in the world...?
Floating in the air were fine ice crystals scattering on the draft.
“Ice shards...?”
Looking past the fluttering frost, Seo Yeong-hwa gasped. Yoon Pyo was already sprinting far ahead, darting beyond the third shattered blast door that Geum Soo-ah had obliterated.
The 'Yoon Pyo' who had just spoken to him was nothing more than an ice mirror illusion—a hyper-realistic construct formed from frozen moisture that reflected his appearance and voice.
Holy crap, is that even possible? To craft an ice illusion so flawless... that not even a 42nd-floor climber like me could sense a hint of dissonance?!
Seo Yeong-hwa stood agape, but soon a fierce grin spread across his face.
Incredible finesse. Overwhelming caliber.
That's my directors for you. That's Geumseong!
A swell of immense pride washed over him, knowing that such monsters of combat were his direct superiors.
Riiip!
Seo Yeong-hwa tore open an emergency summon scroll, rapidly reciting Kim Mu-saeng’s identification profile. It was an item that would instantly yank the target to the user's coordinates, provided the target accepted the prompt. Each scroll cost well over ten million won, but Geumseong was not a guild that pinched pennies on critical assets.
Seo Yeong-hwa knew full well what mattered most right now, and what his revered directors desired above all else.
“Kim Mu-saeng-nim, please respond!”
Securing Kim Mu-saeng alive. Seo Yeong-hwa poured everything into his duty.
Yoon Pyo and Geum Soo-ah had to hurry.
Though events had taken a bizarre turn, the fundamental reality remained: this was the 55th Dungeon.
“Intruder detected. Commencing elimination—”
A Guardian lunged from an alcove.
A flash of light ignited.
The leaping construct vanished mid-air, leaving behind only a shower of smoldering ash that drifted lazily through the frozen air.
Standard Guardians posed no real threat to them.
“Vice Head, I will focus entirely on acceleration!”
“Understood! Leave our rear to me!”
Yoon Pyo poured his mana into sheer velocity.
Zero friction.
A path of ultra-slick permafrost paved the corridor, hurtling Yoon Pyo and Geum Soo-ah forward at speeds far exceeding the automated transit ways Maia controlled.
The rushing wind whipped wildly through their hair. Yet both were acutely aware of the grim timeline: reaching Maia’s sanctum would take seven to eight minutes.
Only seven to eight minutes, yet...
Kim Mu-saeng-nim.
The variable was Kim Mu-saeng.
No matter how brilliant an ace sherpa might be, no matter how seasoned a veteran porter was, there were boundaries between the possible and the impossible. For a low-tier Awakened to survive against the boss of the 55th Dungeon, the terrifying 'Mama', was an absolute impossibility.
Just stay alive... Even if your limbs are torn apart—!
That was the desperate urgency driving Yoon Pyo’s frantic speed. Though he masked his anxiety before Geum Soo-ah, Chairman Geum Byung-chul's direct order weighed heavily on his shoulders.
Just cling to life. Run, Kim Mu-saeng. Even if your arms and legs are severed, we can save you. We can restore you. With our guild’s medical technology and infinite reserves of top-tier potions and restoration scrolls, we can bring you back from the brink of death! So please...!
SSSHHHRRRR—!
As the pair rocketed across the ice sheet, another colossal steel gate barred their path. Swarming around it, dozens of activated Guardians charged forward, weapons humming with lethal charge.
“Intruders detected.”
“Locking down gate. Further advance is—”
The mechanical voices droned.
BZZZZZZT—KA-BOOOOM!
Beside Yoon Pyo, another blinding detonation of light erupted. Silence crashed down in its wake.
Regardless of distance, Geum Soo-ah’s concentrated photon cannon—colloquially known as her Solar Beam—annihilated everything in its trajectory.
“That’s nine gates cleared, Director! Next is—”
“The tenth... The Wailing Wall.”
They had blasted through nine fortified sectors in record time, putting immense distance between themselves and Seo Yeong-hwa at the gate.
Yet both knew the tenth gate was where the true trial began. Guarding it was a monster almost as troublesome as Sorcerer Maia herself—an elite construct too monstrous to be called a mere mid-boss, yet not counting toward the floor's clear conditions.
Even Geum Soo-ah showed a flicker of grim reluctance.
“Yes. The Guardian Minotaur is too durable for my firepower alone to wipe out instantly—”
“I will encase it,” Yoon Pyo answered calmly.
To an outsider, it might have sounded cryptic, but to Geum Soo-ah, it was the perfect strategy.
“Understood! That will be more than enough!”
Absolute Zero (SR)—an ability governing all phenomena related to frost, freezing, and plunging thermal states.
Luminous (SR)—an ability commanding light, channeling photonic eruptions potent enough to vaporize any target from existence.
There was a reason these two held the positions of Raid Director and Vice Head. Though their personalities seemed mismatched at a glance, their mutual respect and terrifying synergy were the pillars that upheld Geumseong Guild's combat supremacy.
“GROOOOOOOOAAAR!”
A guttural bellow resembling that of an enraged bull echoed through the vast corridor. The sheer shockwave vibrated through the air, violently fluttering Yoon Pyo and Geum Soo-ah’s coats.
Looming beside the tenth gate was the half-man, half-bull construct—the Guardian Minotaur.
The moment it hefted its colossal greataxe into the air...
Glisss...
Something glinted at its periphery.
A tiny fragment? A minor sparkle of reflected light.
The Minotaur instinctively tried to disregard it.
“Guh?”
Yet in the next microsecond, that faint reflection multiplied into a blinding constellation. It did not merely surround its front, but hemmed it in from the left, right, above, and below—a flawless, omnidirectional sphere of microscopic ice mirrors encapsulating the titan!
“Now,” Yoon Pyo murmured.
By the time the Minotaur realized the trap was forged of micro-faceted ice crystals, they were already functioning as a closed prism of perfect reflection.
“Let there be light,” Geum Soo-ah chanted softly.
Ice reflecting light.
The concentrated energy Geum Soo-ah fired did not pass through; it was trapped within Yoon Pyo’s spherical ice mirror, bouncing endlessly at the speed of light in a cataclysmic internal resonance chamber.
The process took less than a second.
When the sphere dispersed, the Minotaur’s massive form had been completely annihilated.
“I’ll breach the gate next—wait, what?”
Geum Soo-ah pivoted to obliterate the tenth blast door without breaking stride, but froze mid-motion.
Clap, clap, clap, clap—!
A crisp round of applause echoed through the hall, stealing the words from her mouth.
Even Yoon Pyo, who had been gliding forward with unrelenting momentum, skidded to an abrupt halt, his technique cutting off entirely.
“...How...?”
“Since... when...?”
There, casually clapping his hands, was Kim Mu-saeng.
“Damn... I never thought I’d get to see this in person. That was seriously wicked! The signature combo of Geumseong’s Raid Director and Vice Head—the highest lethal firepower in Korean raid history, right? I got the whole thing on video. Mind if I upload this to You Tube?”
He was squatting comfortably in the corner, recording them with his smartphone.